The Mandarins. Simone Beauvoir de

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СКАЧАТЬ The first trip since the war! You haven’t any right to take someone else.’

      ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘if you see any sort of symbolism in this trip, you’re completely wrong. Nadine simply wants to see something of the world. She’s just an unhappy kid who’s never had a chance to see anything, and it would make me feel good to give her this pleasure. And that’s all there is to it.’

      ‘If that is really all there is to it,’ Paula said slowly, ‘then don’t take her.’ She looked at Henri pleadingly. ‘I ask it of you in the name of our love.’

      They looked at each other silently for a moment. Paula’s whole face was a longing plea. But suddenly Henri grew stubborn. He felt as if he were facing an armed torturer rather than a woman at her wits’ end. ‘You have just told me that you respected my freedom,’ he said.

      ‘Yes,’ she replied fiercely. ‘But if you wanted to destroy yourself I’d try to stop you. And I’m not going to let you betray our love.’

      ‘In other words, I’m free to do as you please,’ he said ironically.

      ‘How can you be so unfair!’ she said, sobbing. ‘I’d take anything from you, anything! But I know inside me I mustn’t take this. No one but I should be going with you.’

      ‘That’s your opinion,’ he said.

      ‘But it’s obvious!’

      ‘Not to me.’

      ‘Because you’re blind, because you want to be blind. Listen,’ she said, forcing her voice to be calm, ‘you’re really interested in that girl, and you see how much you’re hurting me. Please don’t take her.’

      Henri was silent for a moment. There wasn’t very much he could say in answer to that argument, and he resented it as much as if Paula had used physical force to stop him.

      ‘All right,’ he said finally, ‘I won’t take her!’ He got up and walked towards the stairway. ‘Only don’t talk to me any more about freedom!’

      Paula followed him and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Does your freedom have to make me suffer?’

      He shook off her hand. ‘If you suffer when I do what I want to, then I’ll have to choose between you and my freedom.’

      He took a step away from Paula, and she cried out to him anxiously. There was panic in her eyes. ‘Henri,’ she pleaded, ‘what do you mean by that?’

      ‘Just what I said.’

      ‘You’re not going to destroy our love on purpose, are you?’

      He turned and faced her. ‘All right!’ he said. ‘Since you insist on it, let’s have it out once and for all!’ He was irritated enough by now to want to get to the very heart of the matter. ‘There’s a basic misunderstanding between us. We don’t have the same conception of love …’

      ‘There’s no misunderstanding,’ Paula said quickly. ‘I know what you’re going to say – my love is my whole life and you want it to be only a part of yours. I know, and I agree.’

      ‘Yes, but with that as a start, there are other questions that have to be answered,’ Henri said.

      ‘Oh, no,’ Paula said. ‘It’s all so stupid,’ she added in an agitated voice. ‘You’re not going to question our love just because I’ve asked you not to take Nadine!’

      ‘I’m not taking her. That part is settled. But there’s something entirely different involved.’

      ‘Listen,’ Paula said abruptly, ‘let’s get it over with. If you absolutely must take her with you to prove you’re free, then take her with you. I don’t want you to think of me as a tyrant.’

      ‘I certainly will not take her if you’re going to eat your heart out the whole time I’m away.’

      ‘I’d eat my heart out even more if you chose to destroy our love out of spite.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘You’re capable of doing it too. Your least little whims are so important to you!’

      She looked at him imploringly, hopefully waiting for him to say, ‘I hold no grudge against you.’ She could wait a long time for him to say it. She sighed. ‘You love me,’ she said, ‘but you’re never willing to sacrifice anything for our love. It always has to be me who gives everything.’

      ‘Paula,’ he said amicably, ‘if I make that trip with Nadine, I repeat to you again that when we get back I’ll stop seeing her, and nothing will be changed between you and me.’

      Paula remained silent. ‘I’m blackmailing her, that’s just what it amounts to,’ Henri thought. ‘It’s rather disgraceful.’ And the ugliest part of it was that Paula was aware of it, and would play at being the generous one, knowing all the time that she was accepting a rather sordid bargain. But what of it! You want what you want. And what he wanted was to take Nadine.

      ‘Do as you please,’ Paula said with a sigh. ‘I suppose I give too much importance to symbols. Really, it makes hardly any difference whether the girl goes with you, or not.’

      ‘It makes no difference whatsoever,’ Henri said emphatically.

      During the days that followed, Paula didn’t mention the matter again. Except that with each of her gestures, with her every silence, she was saying, ‘I’m defenceless, and you’re taking advantage of it.’ It was true she had no weapons to fight back with, not even the most ineffectual. But her defencelessness was itself a trap; it left Henri no choice but to become either the hangman or the hanged. He had no desire to play the hanged, but the trouble was that neither was he a hangman.

      The night he met Nadine on one of the platforms of the Gare d’Austerlitz, he had a gnawing, uneasy feeling inside him.

      ‘You’re not early,’ she grumbled.

      ‘I’m not late, either.’

      ‘Let’s hurry and get on. If the train should leave …’

      ‘It won’t leave ahead of schedule.’

      ‘You can never tell.’

      They boarded the train and chose an empty compartment. With a perplexed look on her face, Nadine stood motionless for a long moment between the two seats. Then she sat down next to the window, her back to the locomotive. After a moment, she opened her suitcase and began preparing for the night with the meticulous care of an old maid. She slipped on a bathrobe and slippers, wrapped a blanket around her legs, and propped a pillow under her head. From a small basket that served her as a purse, she took a stick of chewing gum. Then she remembered that Henri was present and smiled at him engagingly.

      ‘Did she moan very much when she saw you were dead set on taking me?’

      Henri shrugged his shoulders. ‘Naturally, she wasn’t overjoyed.’

      ‘What did she say?’

      ‘It’s none of your business,’ he said dryly.

      ‘But I’d really like to know.’

      ‘And СКАЧАТЬ